


bad/good luck

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bittersweet, Emotional Constipation, F/M, Families of Choice, Family Drama, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Making Up, Post-Break Up, Smuggler Ben Solo, Smuggler Rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-17 02:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13649112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: His dad always told him he needed a partner to get him through the worst scrapes; that was what being a good smuggler was about, having someone to watch your back. Rey was the only partner he’d ever wanted. She was the only one who understood him, knew how to play their every swindle against corrupt customs officials and gangsters alike. They didn’t even have to talk half of the time—at least not when it was business related.





	bad/good luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apricot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apricot/gifts).



A wall of sound emerged from Maz’s castle as the large, wooden front door opened. No matter how many times Ben came here, it caught him by surprise. So much noise, so much life. So different from the ship he captained alone, haunted by nothing so much as the emptiness that surrounded him as soon as he stepped up its creaking, rickety, dented ramp. He really ought to hire a copilot, a gunner at least, but the thought of sharing the space with someone else gave him hives. He worked best without someone around to second guess him. Besides, it was one less person he had to feed and pay and credits were tight as it was.

Credits were always tight. Uncle Lando told him that was the way of things when Solo blood ran through your veins. It carried bad luck, he used to joke, back when Ben believed himself and his family invincible. Now, Lando didn’t joke about bad luck. And he didn’t show pity on the rare occasions that Ben darkened Cloud City’s doorsteps with reminders of the past, a leviathan that cast its shadow across whichever landing pad was available for him that day. Lando hated seeing the _Falcon_ these days almost as much as Ben hated piloting it.

 _You oughta get yourself a droid navigator at the very least,_ Lando pointed out time and again. _She’s not meant for one person_.

But Ben made do. Things worked a little differently for Force-sensitive people, after all. If he got into trouble, he knew how to fly his way out of danger. For all practical purposes, the guns were useless to him. He outflew just about everyone in the galaxy. He didn’t need guns.

What he needed right now, specifically, was a drink and a job and to get the hell off of Takodana with both as fast as possible. Staying here too long made the back of his neck itch. So much history, so many shifting alliances. Lies festooned the walls and broken promises littered the floors. Spies became murky smudges in his mind’s eye and freedom fighters from who-knew-where blazed with righteous fury. This cantina was a time bomb at the best of times. Maz managed it, of course, with deft good humor and gentle, devious politicking, but that wouldn’t save the place forever, not from the sort of things that skulk in the Unknown Regions if scuttlebutt was to be trusted.

Ben didn’t trust her. He didn’t particularly like her either, though she’d taken a shine to him from the first moment he’d stepped foot in here, far too young and gangly, hunched behind his father’s shoulder as Han showed him the ropes. And to this day, she kept a warm place in her heart for him—and a free drink, chilled just the way he liked it.

It felt too much like pity.

It felt too much like failure.

Because he only came back when he’d scraped the bottom of his very last barrel, shook every corner of the galaxy he could get his hands on and came up empty anyway. He only came back when the jobs dried up. And from the lack of zeroes in his bank account, the jobs had definitely dried up. Given a few minutes at the sabacc table in the corner, he could’ve earned enough to buy what he might need, and though he made a token attempt to do just that—he hated being indebted to anyone, even Maz—she caught sight of him and shouted over the din.

“BEN SOLO!”

He owed no debts to anyone else, at least. He kept meticulous records, encrypted, of course, but clear to him regardless. He owed no debts to people who weren’t family or practically that; it was something, at least.

A familiar woman already stood at the bar, her back to him, hair pulled into three looped buns. She was slight, but muscled, and she wore a jacket that might well have come off a rack just this morning, the lines of its shoulders crisp, the back of it wrinkle-free, not a mark on it. He knew her and he had to wonder at Uncle Lando’s prescience about the Solo family luck. Because he sure as hell wasn’t feeling lucky with her there, poised against the bar like she owned the place.

And because of Maz, there was now no way to edge away and lick his wounds in peace. Sneering, he approached and tried not to feel guilty that he wasn’t going to pay her for the generous measure of brandy she poured for him. This was the way of things between them. There just usually wasn’t an audience for it. And not this audience in particular.

“Rey,” he said, stiff.

“Ben,” she replied, somehow even more so. She did always have to one-up him. Her eyes grazed, haphazard and disinterested, across his body. “Looking good.”

Her voice was as dry as a desert’s air and her words were said before she’d given him even the most cursory of glances. His lip curled of its own volition in response to it. Habit. He lifted the snifter to his mouth and swallowed far more of it in one go than might have been wise. It packed a punch, Maz’s favorite brandy, and though it didn’t quite go to his head, it came damned close. The liquor burned going down and Ben couldn’t suppress the shiver that crawled down his spine in reaction.

“How good it is to see the two of you getting along,” Maz replied, even drier than Rey. “Drink more, Ben Solo. It makes you pleasant.”

His cheeks absolutely did not flush. Not even a little bit. And no heat flared up his neck. Rey snickered and took a sip of her own drink. The only damned smuggler in the galaxy he didn’t want to see and she had to be here. He’d rather have contended with one of Rotta the Huttlet’s criminal tantrums than see her again. And so soon. That damned Solo blood. Never did him a lick of good.

Maybe Maz would take mercy on him for once. She hadn’t dropped a job in his lap in a long time and he hadn’t come asking for one. In a way, she owed him. Last time, he went well above and beyond—

But the less he thought about that, the better. It was in the past and hardly mattered anyway. Except for how the past was sitting next to him, her disdain clear in the hunch of her shoulder, the throbbing flare of annoyance in the Force. She was possibly less happy about him being here than he was.

That fact would be a comfort to him if he let it.

So he did. Let it.

A smile crossed his face, one that caught Rey’s attention entirely if the way her eyes finally lingered on his mouth suggested anything so uncouth as interest. A vicious stab of triumph sliced through him. When she realized he’d caught her looking, he winked, equally vicious. “Hey, there, sweetheart,” he said, not bothering to hide his bitterness.

“Darling,” she replied, entirely devoid of emotion, before swallowing back the last of her drink. She raised her finger to indicate she wanted another. And, unlike Ben, she flipped a credit chit onto the counter to pay for it.

The pet names never sat right on their tongues, but that never stopped them from weaponizing them. They’d never even had pet names before, back when they ought to have had them—if they were like any other two people in love.

He missed her anyway.

For a time, they’d been everything to one another. A too-short amount of time, he still thought, but no less important for it. If he could…

But no, she’d made herself very, very clear. They both had. They weren’t meant for one another. They’d been the best pair of smugglers since his father and Lando had run Outer Rim trade routes together. And that hadn’t been enough. Pangs of regret passed through every inch of his body, down all the way to his fingertips. He wanted to reach out to her, to hold her again.

“What’s the point of this?” Ben asked, not of Rey, but Maz. She had to have known. Somehow, she always knew in these instances.

Maz leaned forward. The lenses that covered her eyes gave her a ridiculous, nonthreatening air. That, he knew, was a false image, but even so, he almost bought the innocent way she blinked. “You came to me, child. There is no point.” He half expected her to launch into a peaceful riddle about the Force and how it worked oh, so mysteriously upon the inhabitants of the galaxy. It was just the kind of thing she’d do. “Why did you decide to return now? Perhaps that is the point.”

Ben rolled his eyes, but Maz didn’t see it because she turned away to help another customer with their drink order. “I don’t have time for this,” he half muttered to himself.

“You’re back to lying, I see,” Rey said, seeming more genuine than he’d heard her sound in at least a year. “Seems you’ve got quite a bit of time on your hands after that last job went south.”

He swallowed. “I never lied to you.” And that was true… from his perspective. He may have stretched the truth a little. Once or twice. Omitted a few words that might have made all the difference. Then, he added, “You heard about that?”

But if that was his sin, so, too, was it hers. Because she never once said it either and she said nothing to ensure he stayed, told him in words none of the truths he’d thought they’d never needed to speak.

Rey scoffed. “Everyone this side of the Outer Rim heard about it,” she said, sarcastic. “Good job.”

“Had to make dad proud somehow,” he replied, more bitter than sarcastic, though that hadn’t been his intention. He’d intended only to make a joke, to perhaps make her uncomfortable. “Figured I could follow in his footsteps a bit.”

Instead, she smiled, fond, half lost in memory. “He always was good at getting himself into trouble.”

“Among other things,” Ben agreed. He ran his finger over the rim of his glass and wished he’d thought to ask Maz for another drink before she made her rounds. It would be a while before she returned. Perhaps she intended it to be this way. Or perhaps Ben was just supremely unlucky in ways he didn’t even realize. Then, uncertain what else to do, he tipped the glass back and forth. What little liquid remained in the bottom followed the motions. It was almost soothing, watching it; it gave him something besides Rey to focus on anyway. The act of missing her was enough to open a hole in his chest, one he’d long thought healed over. “Do you know if Maz has a job for me or what?”

“I do know,” Rey answered. She glanced at him sidelong, as though to purposefully show off just how long her eyelashes were. The light seem to catch in them and it only infuriated Ben all the more that he was still so affected by her when she didn’t seem the least bit struck in return. After another moment, she added, thoughtful, “I’m the one with the job.”

Ben’s mouth opened, closed again, and opened one last time for good measure. “You… have a job?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And you need help?”

She frowned and she got that furrow between her eyebrows that only ever formed when she was angry and was pretending not to be. Her hands chafed over her thighs and her mouth pinched finally in consternation. “I wasn’t expecting you to show up,” she said, defensiveness clear in her voice. He couldn’t deny liking the sound of it. Let her be caught out and off-footed for once. “I wasn’t looking for you.”

“I had no illusions on that score.” He didn’t like the way his voice got so tight despite his best efforts. It gave so much away, things that Rey didn’t even need the help to figure out.

“I… guess you’ll do,” she said, feigning indifference. “If you’re in.”

“Do you want me to be?” That was pretty much the only metric that mattered. If she wanted him there, he would be. It was as simple and as complicated as that. Even after everything, he’d go where she requested, help her with whatever she needed. He suspected, if he were to truly ask it of her, that the same would be true in reverse. They were bound, the two of them, to one another in ways they didn’t understand and refused to look at too closely at the best of times. And these were not those, not by a long shot.

She didn’t say anything for a long, terrible moment that stretched and stretched again. Just when it was prepared to snap, she said, quiet, “Yes.” Rueful, she scrubbed her hand over her opposite forearm and glared down at the bar. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

He leaned against the bar and stared down at it himself, stunned by her admission—an admission he hadn’t expected her to give at all. Maz couldn’t have anticipated that. There was no way he could blame her, but he wanted to, if only to make it easier. If Maz was the reason she changed her mind, then he could know why she’d changed it at all. But if she’d changed her mind on her own, there was nothing Ben could do when everything went to shit again. Which it would. Because it always did. That was how they were. Things might have been different if he hadn’t lost Han the way he had, if he hadn’t so thoroughly cut himself off from the rest of his family in retaliation. The life of a smuggler could end in a flash. And his father’s—

Best not to think of it.

Still, his mother always had given him good advice; he could have used it now. It might not have worked on Rey, given her penchant for doing the opposite of what others expected of her regardless of how she personally felt, but that wasn’t set in stone. Good advice might have been helpful.

Perhaps this shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was, that she’d suddenly drop a job in his lap just when he needed it the most even knowing that they… hated one another.

Hate. Not the right word for it, but as close to it as Ben knew how to articulate. Nobody that Ben liked could generate the kind of envy, regret, longing, and pain that Rey did in him. And yet there was a flicker of hope, too, that they could do at least this for one another again.

His dad always told him he needed a partner to get him through the worst scrapes; that was what being a good smuggler was about, having someone to watch your back. Rey was the only partner he’d ever wanted. She was the only one who understood him, knew how to play their every swindle against corrupt customs officials and gangsters alike. They didn’t even have to talk half of the time—at least not when it was business related.

“Well?” she said, the question brittle in her mouth, the word itself spit out as though she didn’t want it there any longer.

“I say, ‘Yes,’” he replied, because of course he did. He always would. That didn’t make him weak and he refused to believe it did. It was the sort of thing his father would have done, his mother, even his uncle. They always helped, even if they dragged their heels—Han—or jumped into it headfirst without any thought—Leia—or did so despite the tolls it would take—Luke. Rey wasn’t his enemy; she wouldn’t exact more than he was willing to give. It was just himself he was putting at risk here.

She laughed then, bitterly amused. “You’d think this was a funeral,” she said, out of nowhere, presumably because she didn’t sound as thrilled as she should have to have a pair of hands that’ll help without double crossing her or charging an exorbitant fee for them. “It’s not a bad thing, is it, working together again?”

He cleared his throat. “We were always good together.” He couldn’t stop the small measure of hope that entered his tone then. Hope, his father would have said, was for suckers.

Hope was the only thing you had when you propositioned me, his mother would have said if she was in earshot.

He added, “It’s been a long time. Maybe it’ll be different. We’re older now. We know one another.”

Most of the time, when he said things like this, he didn’t believe it himself. Nothing, in his experience, ever changed, not really. Beings across the galaxy ever remained who they were. Lasats couldn’t change the markings on their coats and all that.

The thing was…

The words he wanted to say stuck in his throat, but this wasn’t the time for fear. Lasats may not have been able to change their markings, but he’d heard tell that sometimes they could make friends with their sworn enemies. He reached for her hand and squeezes, his fingers settling in her palm like they were always meant to be there. “I always loved you.” He’d never said it while he had the chance.

He should have told her every day, as often as possible. Perhaps he would now, if she’d let him.

She drew in a deep breath and bent her head forward. “You were the only family I wanted.” Then she looked up at him, a brilliant smile on her mouth and he knew without her telling him that she would let him. He let out the breath he was holding and he smiled, too.

“What’s the job?” he asked and as she told him, he smiled all the wider.

They were going to be great.

They had nothing left to worry about on that score. Ben would do his damnedest to make sure of that.


End file.
